High school graduates are better off skipping college than attending MICA, research suggests

If you graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore — or with an art degree from any college, for that matter — you might not want to look at new research from PayScale Inc. (Update: MICA has written a response to this research for the Baltimore Business Journal. You can read it here.)

PayScale's findings show a MICA graduate's net return on investment over the 20-year period following graduation is minus-$90,900. To put it another way, not attending college would be $90,900 more valuable than earning a MICA degree.

To reach that figure, PayScale factored in an estimated cost of $205,200 to attend and graduate from MICA, as well as estimated salaries of MICA graduates. It calculated salaries from 62 former MICA students who reported averaging from $40,000 as senior graphic designers to about $74,000 as Web designers. MICA graduates reported average starting salaries of $39,500.

MICA officials could not be reached for comment.

To be sure, PayScale's report is brutal for MICA. The college ranks 473rd in return on investment out of 476 private, nonprofit colleges included in PayScale's research.

But PayScale also shows that art degrees in general are bad investments from a strictly financial standpoint.

The University of Maryland, College Park, for instance, ranks 80th on PayScale's list with an overall 20-year return on investment of $501,300 (based on an estimated $95,630 cost of attending through graduation for in-state students). But for art majors, that return on investment plummets to $155,800, according to PayScale. For out-of-state students who pay an estimated $167,700 for four-year degrees, the 20-year return on investment is an even worse $83,650 for art majors.

The PayScale data has limitations. The Atlantic's Derek Thompson notes that for a fuller picture "you would need to study a huge group of similar kids, some of whom went to great colleges, some to middling colleges, and some to bad ones, and measure the difference."

He continues: "When we measure lifetime earnings of students graduating from elite (and poor) colleges, we're measuring both the quality of the college and the earnings potential of the student attending that college before they stepped foot on campus."

And the purpose of higher education, of course, is greater than churning out narrow-minded capitalists who are out to make the most money imaginable. There are many reasons beyond earning potential to choose schools and majors.

But the PayScale data suggests art majors should enter college with eyes wide open — and with a great love for their work. Especially when attending a college as expensive as MICA.